Saturday, June 18, 2011

black bridal car

It all started with a black bridal car festooned with flowers and cheesy crepe paper.

“Lucky for them, they found each other,” the fortyish woman sitting beside me at the bus station suddenly blurted out as the black car sped past us. I gave her a polite smile and went back to reading my book.

“Oh yes, it’s good for them. Me, I’ve been alone for years now,” she continued. “And I’m telling you, it’s hard, it’s really hard. I decided to call it quits with my boyfriend years ago because he had been coming home late from bars. I couldn’t help but think that he was cheating on me. I mean, who would come home at six in the morning from a bar? Did he think that I didn’t know that he hooked up with some girl there?”

“Yes, perhaps he was cheating on you,” I curtly commented and started reading my book again.

“Exactly! And what if he brought home AIDS with him? That would have been terrible. So I decided to end it. The relationship wouldn’t have amounted to anything anyway.”

“Good choice,” I simply said as I uncomfortably leafed through the pages of my book.

“You’ll never know what you’re going to get these days. I’d rather be safe than sorry,” she said, more to herself than to me. She went on to ruminate about relationships at this time and age, and how people should always be on guard.

By this time, I had already closed my book; the woman had all my attention now. I noticed that she was not so much into conversation as into prolonged monologues. During the rare moments that her pale blue eyes met mine, she sought confirmation and affirmation, not active dialog.

She was wearing an oversized white shirt with some colorful print in front. He baggy pants seemed haphazardly chosen and worn in haste. She had with her an empty shopping bag.

“And you know what else he did?” she continued while we both boarded the bus that had just arrived. “One night, he went out with my mother and they came back home after midnight. And then, that same night, he slowly crept out of bed and went to my mother’s room and locked the door behind him. What was I supposed to think?”

“How old exactly is your mom at that time?”

“Sixty,” she quipped. “But love knows no age.”

I asked her if she had talked to her mom about it. She said the sexagenarian replied that she was merely trying to live her own life. I have to agree. Everyone has the right to be happy. But sleeping with your daughter’s boyfriend might be going overboard.

“That’s why I decided to end everything. It’s no use staying with a guy like that, even if he was a prince.”

“A prince?”

Apparently, the guy was the distant cousin of the ruling monarch of Monaco. This was getting stranger by the minute. It was more than I expected from a normal morning bus ride.

Fortunately, before the conversation took more unexpectedly surreal twists, she said she had to get off at the next bus station.

“It was really nice talking to you,” she said. She gave me her name and her mobile number, which I wrote at the end page of my book. “Maybe we can meet up again to chat.”

I gave her an ambiguous smile. The bus pulled over by the station. And I watched her walk away. I slowly opened my book again, hoping not to see another black bridal car.